I'm Stephan Kinsella, author of the forthcoming book Law in a Libertarian World: Legal Foundations of a Free Society, to be published later this year by Liberty.me. I have written and spoken for a couple decades on libertarian and free market topics. I founded and am executive editor of Libertarian Papers (http://www.libertarianpapers.org/), and director of Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (http://c4sif.org/). I am a follower of the Austrian school of economics (as exemplified by Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe) and anarchist libertarian propertarianism, as exemplified by Rothbard and Hoppe. I believe in reason, individualism, the free market, technology, and society, and think the state is evil and should be abolished.

My Kinsella on Liberty podcast is here http://www.stephankinsella.com/kinsella-on-liberty-podcast/
I also believe intellectual property (patent and copyright) is completely unjust, statist, protectionist, and utterly incompatible with private property rights, capitalism, and the free market, and should not be reformed, but abolished.

I don't know what left-anarchists you have been talking to lately, but most that I have talked to are completely opposed to capitalism in general. They consider capitalists to be the major threat and the state as a key component. Given their hostile views towards capitalism, how can they be our allies?

I am thinking of people like Gary Chartier and Charles Johnson and Roderick Long. The argument over capitalism here is mainly one of semantics, as I see it. They are for free markets, profit, trade, and private property ownership. they are anti-state and anti-monopoly and anti-IP. That is basically what we favor.

I can't speak for Johnson, but Chartier and Long are left-libertarians, not traditional anarchists.

There are a huge chunk of traditional anarchists who oppose anarcho-capitalism even as a theoretical system. Many traditional anarchists are full-blown communists.

In my view, these traditional anarchists are our greatest intellectual opponent, for it is capitalism's productivity that even lets us sustain a given system. Stated differently, I'd rather have the State than lose private ownership of capital; a large number of statists are closer to us than a large number of traditional anarchists.

Yes, this maybe right. Left-libertarians have problems that left-libertarian-ANARCHISTS do not; left-anarchists have huge problems, that left-LIBERTARIAN anarchists do not. But basically the left-libertarian-anarchists are largely in syncopy with us, except for some emphases, personal preferences, and predictions--about which differences I do not care too much.

European leftist 'libertarian' 'anarchists' are people who believe property is theft while worshipping Marx. They claim to follow the tradition of the 'original' anarchists in Europe. They are not allies at all, I imagine.

The Regression Theorem. Praxeological or conjectural history? Mises states in Theory of Money and Credit that "all these statements implied in the regression theorem are enounced apodictically as implied in the apriorism of praxeology. It must happen this way," however Hulsmann and North have written that they do not believe it to be praxeological. Block mentioned in an email exchange we had that he believes it to be apodictic. What are your thoughts?

I do not claim to be an expert on this but my opinion is that it is just a conjectural explanation to show how it's possible for gold's purchasing power to arise without some infinite regress. And I think empirically/historically this is actually how money arose--probably. BUt I do not think it proves money has to arise this way. I do not think Mises himself thought it proved that, but some of his followers have interpreted it this way. I am not persuaded. In any case, whatever he really meant, I am not persusaded money must arise this way. I think the concepts of commodity and good etc. need to be clarified, especially in view of the digital age and phenomenon like Bitcoin.

Wow I have no idea how you have the patience and even keel to talk to people like this. Very funny how you two are debating IP and he won't even define what he thinks it is. Mad respect to you Kinsella, keep up the awesome work.

I think he is better than most federal legislators, but he does not seem to be very radical or libertarian, and in any case I am not interested in politics or political activism. Apparently he is bad on IP, say--not surprising for people who worship the Constitution, which I regard as a statist document http://c4sif.org/2012/08/rand-paul-bad-on-intellectual-property/

I'm currently taking a law school course called "Copyrights and Music." Currently, the professor is on a bit of a kick about how minority musicians in the blues era were wronged because they often couldn't get copyright protection on their work, while white musicians would cover their songs and make lots of money. Personally I see this as the state's fault, but I don't know that I can communicate that. How would you respond?

Do you have any other examples of IP law being used to victimize minorities?

Well copyright has probably had a disproportionate effect on music that involves "sampling" and that is hip-hop or black oriented.

THe law should not discriminate, of course, but the fact that a racist populace's illegitimate criminal state discriminates against blacks in handing out monopoly IP rights, does not mean that it's legitimate to hand out these monopoly IP rights.

Are you ok with me taking your book when it is published, digitizing it, and selling an ebook version while keeping 100% of the profits? You are against copyright correct? So this should not be an issue. Tell me it is ok, and I will do it.

By selling hard copies. The Mises Institute and LFB make a decent amount from book sales of things that are given away free online. Jeff Tucker tells a story in one lecture he gave of some random person publishing Rothbard's America's Great Depression out of the blue at a cheaper price than LvMI, and it started a competition to see who could provide it cheapest (which LvMI ended up winning, while still making a profit).

More importantly, though, you don't have a right to make money doing something that people aren't willing to pay you for.

I have a bunch of books I bought from the Mises institute. One day, a friend of mine was looking at my library, picked up one of those books (I don't remember which one exactly) and realize the book had never been open and laugh at me for being a phony with very intellectual books that I never read but I read this particular book on my e-reader and when I explained to him that you can get all those books for free on the same website I bought them from he was kind of flabbergasted. To him, it made not sense what so ever. An interesting discussion ensued.

I also have to admit that I have books in my library I haven't read, yet. But that's just because sometime I order half a dozen books and I don't read them all simultaneously upon arrival.

“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.”

That's true. Although I would view that sort of full duplication aimed at externalizing costs to small/individual content creators as something of a rip-off, even if it is not legally recognized as a form of theft.

I'd be interested in Kinsella's take. I tend to think underselling an author with their own work should not be illegal, but it should be considered poor style and fall under the "don't be a jerk" category.

and sell it as my own.

Well... duplication and plagiarism are different issues. It is an easier argument that fraud should be defended against.

I thought (maybe incorrectly) that the reason they created the GPL was not just that commercial companies were selling the software as their own, but that they were copyrighting/licensing it and then suing the users/creators of the FOSS version. I.e., the GPL was a self-defensive license.

Exactly. Who would want to give money to some lazy turd who just copies from other people? At that point, just torrent it for free. Why give money to someone doing next to nothing? If you're going to give money, it seems to me any sane person would want that money to go to the person who authored the work.

How does one determine how much restitution must be paid for damages that largely take the form of information obtained by violating property rights?

For example, suppose I'm an author and plan on crowd-funding my next book. Before I do, someone breaks into my house and copies the entire book from a file on my computer and then proceeds to publish it on the internet so everyone can get it for free. Now there's a good chance that I won't be able to make nearly as much money with my crowd-funding campaign due to the fact that the book is already out there.

How much restitution does the trespasser owe me? I'm not even sure how to make an order of magnitude estimation. Is there a case when it could be several million dollars?

"You may not impose any effective technological measures on the Work that
restrict the ability of a recipient of the Work from You to exercise the
rights granted to that recipient under the terms of the License."

I don't blame CC for this; they are doing what they can within the statist rules. But if copyright disappeared so would they--and good. But I do blame them for not actively and vociferously and explicitly opposing copyright root and branch. I wish they would.

My view is that Bitcoins are not ownable scarce resources, and therefore it is impossible to steal them. But usually you have to invade the legitimate property of people to get the key, so this would usually be some form of trespass.

yes, but when I play a monopoly game the dollars in the game are scarce in this sense too, but it's just a convention. I do not see "bitcoins" as rivalrous resources. THey are just an aspect of a ledger system schema that some people choose to adhere to, or not.

Consider an email system. Say you get a gmail address. well that is by contract with google. The name is scarce but it's by contract. There maybe property rights but they are governed by the contract with google and you don't really own it.

But with BTC as I grok it, there is no contract you sign, no terms of service you agree to. It is simply not against the rules to "steal" someone's BTC, if you somehow find their private key or password. Tha'ts how I see it right now, anyway. I am open to correction and trying to get a better understanding of exactly how BTC operates and what it "is".

Polycentric/Anarchic law solves this issue. Whether or not bitcoins are themselves property does not matter. What matters is that the bitcoin is valued. anything that is valued will have a corresponding level of protection that is also valued by the Acting Man (depending on time preference). So even if bitcoins themselves are not property, they exist within a framework of property in the real, physical world. So like Kinsella said in earlier, I may not be able to take you to court for the direct theft of BTC, but I can take you to court for altering my hard drive (hacking) or trespassing. The free market will have courts which will attempt to appease customers, and those customers may value BTC. if BTC reaches a large stable network as a money, then these types of "bitcoin thefts" will be addressed in the overarching legal network among various DROs.

I'm not exactly sure you're being consistent with your definition of private property in this case. A finite resource (Bitcoin) is slowly being distributed to the world. I gain ownership to a BTC or two through trade with another individual. Someone, somehow manages to steal these BTC from me and you don't consider it theft because it's "not against the rules"?

Yes, it would. Because the paper fake-notes are scarce resources owned by the homeowner, as is the home. THis is an act of trespass. I think computer hacking and spam can be a type of trespass -- http://www.stephankinsella.com/2010/01/why-spam-is-trespass/ -- but unless this happens, merely having someone's bitcoin password per se is not trespass. NOr is even using it to transfer the BTC -- because the BTC rules do not prohibit it.

By contrast, suppose I somehow guess your BAnk of America pin or password or your SS# etc. I use this information to persuade BoA to let me access your safe deposit box. WHen I do so I am using your property (the contents of your box) without your consent, and also in violation of BoA's implied or express terms of service (the basis on which they let you enter their facility). So I am violating property rights: trespass, conversion, theft, whatever.

I simply do not see an analogue to the case of Bitcoin "theft"--unless trespass was committed to obtain the private key/password. Otherwise, the use of the password is not in violation of any contract rules (b/c BTC is pseudonomymous and requires no Terms of Service to be agreed to), it is not a type of spam or computer hacking, it is not a trespass against some owned resource as in the bank example.

Thinking about it more, I'm not so sure. I think what I was trying to get at is that while people think of bitcoin as valuable, it's just a particular arrangement of bits. However, this would also apply to money in a bank account, so it requires a bit more thought on my part.

Bits aren't tangible. "Stealing" someone's private key is really "copying" it. There's no physical object I've been deprived of if someone takes a picture over my shoulder as I unwrap my paper wallet. I still "have" my private key. (I really have a piece of paper with a pattern of ink on it; the "key" is an abstract intangible.)

It's impossible to "steal" someone's private key since private keys are not objects and cannot be "taken".

In the case of monopoly money, one can certainly take my pieces of paper, and I will be left without the physical object. In the case of Bitcoin, there is no such object.

This is the root of the error right here: reifying the "bitcoins". In reality, there are no "bitcoin" objects. There are wafers of silicon, and spinning magnetic discs, and copper wires. When a Bitcoin Transaction happens, we say that "bitcoins are exchanged" but that's merely a convenient misnomer. Messages are transmitted in accordance with the Bitcoin protocol. That's what happens in a Bitcoin Transaction. Part of the protocol dictates that only messages that follow certain rules (rules which are designed to produce behavior mimicking a scarce physical commodity) will be paid attention to by Bitcoin miners' software, but there are no physical pieces of bitcoin being sent around.

Bitcoin is a collection of messages, not a physical commodity currency. The Bitcoin network is a means of transmitting particular messages about value transactions, not a means of exchanging some physical money token. Any argument which erroneously suggests that Bitcoins can be stolen like gold can be stolen invariably trips up on this fundamental point first.

As I'm not a lawyer, if I compromised a bank's security and used it to either wire myself money, or simply change my account balance in their database, wouldn't those be theft, even though they don't involve physical theft? (I honestly don't know)

I suspect if the above would be theft, you'd still differentiate between Bitcoins because bank account balances can be drawn from to receive physical dollars, which are physical tangible items, but Bitcoins can be similarly redeemed.

"as a patent lawyer, you must also understand that property rights exists across a spectrum, with varying degrees of control of the parties involved. In addition to this, the world appears to be moving towards a society where more and more wealth and capitol are being creating through intangible mediums. There is also the idea that patents and copyright can be viewed as a products in their own rights through licensing business models."

Basically, all rights are property rights. A property right is the legally recognized right to control the use of an identifiable rivalrous resource. The libertarian view is that the assignment of such control-rights should follow the Lockean idea of first-use and contract law. It is very simple. If there is a resource that is disputed then the person who had it first should get it, unless he contractually gave it to the other guy.

THe owner of a resource can do various things contractually with his resources--he can alienate them (sell them) i.e. totally transfer title. Or he can invite someone temporarily, or co-own it, or least it, or own it jointly in some corporate form. THis is the spectrum I see. If you lease an apartnment the law says you are the lessee and the owner has the base rights (naked ownership in the civil law). In libertarian theory, the tenant would just be the 'owner" by contract but only for some limited time and purposes. That is the spectrum.

People use contracts to induce others to share information or provide services, but that does not mean the information shared is literally owned. It is a mistake to think of ownership of "intangible" things.

"Why is is that in the spectrum of property rights, tangibility is of such importance? I know that scarcity is key, but intangible products like music and writing require tangible resources to create."

For the same reason you can't print money without diluting hte purchasing power of other money. For the same reason you can't just add positive welfare rights to the set of negative rights without the former taking away from the latter. A right to an intangible thing always just means that tangible state force is used to take away from the "infringer" some of his material property (say, money). So it's jsut a disguised transfer of wealth, a taking of property, a redistribution of wealth.

you just develop a drug and sell it for a profit. THe way it was done by Italy and Switzerland in the 1900s when they became pharma powerhouses without patent protection -- see chapter 9 of Boldrin and Levine. In a free market system, there would be no/lower taxes , regulations, etc, so consumers would be richer and companies would have more resources, so there would be no problem. Yes, you invite competition once you make and sell a popular drug or product--that's the free market.

So if I develop a new smartphone that takes me years to do and lots of money, how do I survive in a marketplace where anyone can take apart my designs and copy what I made? I may have first mover advantage in the market, but there's no guarantee the profits from that will enable me to recoup my initial investment.

How can self interested people/companies be incentivized to do expensive research if people are able to copy? Or should every industry bottleneck its product by some anti-piracy measures (selling only to trusted clients, adding anti-piracy measures into discs like product keys, etc)?

I know you probably get this question all the time, so if you just pointed me to some paper in which you address this, that'd be great.

questions are fine, if they are sincere, but let's be clear: questions are not arguments. They often have implicit assumptions so lead to equivocation. In short: you survive in the world by successful action. In an advanced economy you can specialize and use others as means and profit by selling some good or service that people desire. Thisi s always done in the face of competition and the possibility others will learn from you, emulate you, compete with you, copy you, improve upon you. Every entrepreneur faces this issue. You have to be aware of the costs of free -rider issues and have to always excellently serve your customers and keep innovating to maintain a profit, which the market is always pushing by competition to keep low.

How do you argue against those that say patents promote science and lower R&D costs because they force inventors to reveal their secrets?

If you're writing a song in a coffee shop, and I peek over your shoulder or glance at your paper while you're in the washroom, and I memorize and your song and publish it under my own name, have I committed a crime in an IP-free world?

In an IP-free world, can plagiarism be in anyway illegal? Would university anti-plagiarism codes hold up in court?

Are non-disclosure agreements legitimate contracts, regardless of their enforceability?

AS for homosexuals -- I think again Hoppe has been unfairly characterized. He is predicting one aspect of the way private associations might treat people in their midst who actively seek to upset the traditional family-centered order. A priest is not married but can live among a community of families; he does not oppose the institution of heterosexual marriage. Other people with different modes and preferences would of course be tolerated. Hoppe's views are not anti-gay at all; he is talking not about his own preferences but aobut the likely way culturaly conservative groups would use private property and contract to select for people who are largely supportive of the basic institutions of such a society. Gay people of course can do this too. He is referring to activist types who are actively trying to undermine and oppose basic institutions that he thinks would predominate in some private communities. I see no problem with this. As for his immigration views he is explicitly an anarchist and his views that people have a problem with are "second best" type views--and besides, a large number of libertarians have long been in favor of some immigration restrictions, yet they are not singled out for derision as Hoppe is--

"If you're writing a song in a coffee shop, and I peek over your shoulder or glance at your paper while you're in the washroom, and I memorize and your song and publish it under my own name, have I committed a crime in an IP-free world?"

No. Unless the coffee shop owner has some rules that everyone agrees to.

"In an IP-free world, can plagiarism be in anyway illegal?"

I don't think so.

" Would university anti-plagiarism codes hold up in court?"

well they would not really need to--the school has a contract that specifies they can eject a student at any time for any reason, so.... They just deny him access to their property and that right would be enforced as normal.

confusingly worded. BUt yes, they are legitimate, meaning they are enforceable--but all this means is that they specify a payment of money damages in the event of a specified event (divulging information). this is the way the Rothbardian title-transfer theory of contract sees things: see http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/17_2/17_2_2.pdf

Overall great comment. As to who was the first libertarian, I don't really think you can point to any "first libertarian." Libertarianism has existed, from Judaism to Christianity to many religions, to natural-law philosophers, to the natural-rights philosophers such as John Locke and the Scholastics, to the classical-liberal tradition, and to the Old Right and to the modern libertarian movement.

Some key figures in this movement are:

Jesus Christ: While I won't exactly categorize him as a libertarian (though some have made well-thought out and good cases that he can be categorized as such), Jesus Christ's teachings, other than bringing salvation to mankind through His death and resurrection (as I am a Bible-believing Christian), involved the primacy of God's Kingdom over the world's kingdoms. James Redford's essay (which I linked) deals a lot with the libertarianism of Jesus. And Norman Horn, in his "New Testament Theology of the State" (which is available on Lew Rockwell's website as well as his own), deals with the libertarian teachings of the Scriptures, especially in the New Testament. In fact, His entire life can be categorized as defiance to the State, from His birth down to His very death and resurrection (the former of which was caused by the Roman government and the Jews who worked with the government).

Lao-tzu: While I am not a Taoist, Lao-tzu can be categorized as a libertarian, and Murray Rothbard made a good case for this in one of his articles. Lao-tzu was an individualist, in contrast to many of the collectivists in Ancient China

Rothbard says:

Unlike the notable apologist for the rule of philosopher-bureaucrats, however, Lao-tzu developed a radical libertarian creed. For Lao-tzu the individual and his happiness was the key unit and goal of society. If social institutions hampered the individual's flowering and his happiness, then those institutions should be reduced or abolished altogether. To the individualist Lao-tzu, government, with its "laws and regulations more numerous than the hairs of an ox," was a vicious oppressor of the individual, and "more to be feared than fierce tigers."

Government, in sum, must be limited to the smallest possible minimum; "inaction" was the proper function of government, since only inaction can permit the individual to flourish and achieve happiness. Any intervention by government, Lao-tzu declared, would be counterproductive, and would lead to confusion and turmoil. After referring to the common experience of mankind with government, Lao-tzu came to this incisive conclusion: "The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished…. The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be."

The wisest course, then, is to keep the government simple and for it to take no action, for then the world "stabilizes itself." As Lao-tzu put it, "Therefore the Sage says: I take no action yet the people transform themselves, I favor quiescence and the people right themselves, I take no action and the people enrich themselves…."

Lao-tzu arrived at his challenging and radical new insights in a world dominated by the power of Oriental despotism. What strategy to pursue for social change? It surely was unthinkable for Lao-tzu, with no available historical or contemporary example of libertarian social change, to set forth any optimistic strategy, let alone contemplate forming a mass movement to overthrow the State. And so Lao-tzu took the only strategic way out that seemed open to him, counseling the familiar Taoist path of withdrawal from society and the world, of retreat and inner contemplation.

I submit that while contemporary Taoists advocate retreat from the world as a matter of religious or ideological principle, it is very possible that Lao-tzu called for retreat not as a principle, but as the only strategy that in his despair seemed open to him. If it was hopeless to try to disentangle society from the oppressive coils of the State, then he perhaps assumed that the proper course was to counsel withdrawal from society and the world as the only way to escape State tyranny.

John Locke and the Levellers: John Locke, despite his inconsistencies, can be proved to be a libertarian, as he advocated property rights, the homesteading principle, classical liberalism (in fact, he is considered the father of it), and other great libertarian principles.

Rothbard says this of him:

There are still anomalies in John Locke's career and thought, but they can be cleared up by the explicit discussion and implications of the impressive work by Richard Ashcraft.[5] Essentially Ashcraft demonstrates that Locke's career can be divided into two parts. Locke's father, a country lawyer and son of minor Puritan country gentry, fought in Cromwell's army and was able to use the political pull of his mentor Colonel Alexander Popham, MP, to get John into the prominent Westminster School. At Westminster, and then at Christ Church, Oxford, Locke obtained a BA and then an MA in 1658, then became a lecturer at the college in Greek and rhetoric in 1662, and became a medical student and then a physician in order to stay at Oxford without having to take holy orders.

Despite or perhaps because of Locke's Puritan background and patronage, he clearly came under the influence of the Baconian scientists at Oxford, notably including Robert Boyle, and hence he tended to adopt the "scientific," empiricist, low-key absolutist viewpoint of his friends and mentors. While at Oxford, Locke and his colleagues enthusiastically welcomed the restoration of Charles II, and indeed the king himself ordered the university to keep Locke as a medical student without having to take holy orders. While at Oxford, Locke adopted the empiricist methodology and sensate philosophy of the Baconians, leading to his later Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Moreover, in 1661 Locke, this later champion of religious toleration, wrote two tracts denouncing religious tolerance, and favoring the absolute state enforcing religious orthodoxy. In 1668, Locke was elected to the Royal Society, joining his fellow Baconian scientists.

Something happened to John Locke in the year 1666, however, when he became a physician and in the following year when he became personal secretary, advisor, writer, theoretician, and close friend of the great Lord Ashley (Anthony Ashley Cooper), who in 1672 was named the first Earl of Shaftesbury. It was due to Shaftesbury that Locke, from then on, was to plunge into political and economic philosophy, and into public service as well as revolutionary intrigue. Locke adopted from Shaftesbury the entire classical-liberal Whig outlook, and it was Shaftesbury who converted Locke into a firm and lifelong champion of religious toleration and into a libertarian exponent of self-ownership, property rights, and a free-market economy. It was Shaftesbury who made Locke into a libertarian and who stimulated the development of Locke's libertarian system.

John Locke, in short, quickly became a Shaftesburyite, and thereby a classical liberal and libertarian. All his life and even after Shaftesbury's death in 1683, Locke only had words of adulation for his friend and mentor. Locke's epitaph for Shaftesbury declared that the latter was "a vigorous and indefatigable champion of civil and ecclesiastical liberty." The editor of the definitive edition of Locke's Two Treatises of Government justly writes that "without Shaftesbury, Locke would not have been Locke at all." This truth has been hidden all too often by historians who have had an absurdly monastic horror of how political theory and philosophy often develop — in the heat of political and ideological battle. Instead, many felt they had to hide this relationship in order to construct an idealized image of Locke the pure and detached philosopher, separate from the grubby and mundane political concerns of the real world.[6]

Professor Ashcraft also shows how Locke and Shaftesbury began to build up, even consciously, a neo-Leveller movement, elaborating doctrines very similar to those of the Levellers. Locke's entire structure of thought in his Two Treatises of Government, written in 1681–1682 as a schema for justifying the forthcoming Whig revolution against the Stuarts, was an elaboration and creative development of Leveller doctrine — the beginnings in self-ownership or self-propriety, the deduced right to property and free exchange, the justification of government as a device to protect such rights, and the right of overturning a government that violates, or becomes destructive of, those ends. One of the former Leveller leaders, Major John Wildman, was even close to the Locke-Shaftesbury set during the 1680s.

And the Levellers can be considered the first modern libertarian movement, as historian Jeff Riggenbach showed in his lectures and articles (which can be accessed for free at mises.org).

You know the rest: Ludwig von Mises, Leonard Read, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, and many more from both the past and present. But these are some of the chief influences on libertarianism I would include.

Outside of ancap circles, anarchism is often associated with non-hierarchical social constructs. I assume you aren't opposed to hierarchy on moral or philosophical grounds, but are you sympathetic to the attitude among some anarchists against hierarchy?

I am sympathetic insofar as I would also oppose hiearchies and authority structures and institutions that arise only because of intervention in the economy and society. But I think that absent the state and even in a free society there would be lots of hierarchy, authority, and natural order, lots of inequality and diversity. I see no reason to oppose this at all. But I do agree we should get rid of the state and thus the effects it has in distorting society and culture.

I want to describe a short scenario involving IP and ask you a couple of questions about it.

Scenario: I spend 12 years writing a novel. I start selling it. People love it. I'm on track to be a bestseller and achieve fame and fortune. But then some random publisher decides to copy its contents word for word and start selling it on its own, giving me nothing for my part of the work (the writing, the "intellectual property").

Questions:

(1) Has the publisher done something morally wrong? Why or why not?

(2) Do I have grounds for a lawsuit to get money I would have otherwise gotten had the publisher not copied my work?

(3) Does it change anything if the publisher changes the name of the author from me to their in-house editor?

(4) Generally speaking, what incentives are there for producers of writing in a world without IP? Do you think these incentives will be able to sustain our demand for writing?

THere are a variety of reason some people still support IP. Some are Randians and are stuck with her view. Some are Constitutionalists, and support it because it's in the Constitution. Some are utilitarians and have been misled into thinking it supports human welfare and innovation. But I think the main reason is lack of clarity on property concepts and consistency in thinking. And ignorance of how IP works. They have been told IP is necessary and part of the free market and capitalism, and they accept this as a given, and this gets them off on the wrong foot.

I am not aware of many libertarians supporting child ownership. But there is confusion over fundamental concepts and principles like "property" and ownership. My view, in short: children become self-owners either b/c of the fundamental priority of direct control over one's body, or because of an implicit positive obligation on the part of parents to manumit and respect the rights of the children they produce. See How We Come To Own Ourselves, http://www.mises.org/story/2291

Say I die and want to leave my 1 year old grandkids with 100k for their 21st birthday. So I give the money to a lawyer who is to give them the money on the 21st birthday. I view parenting as the lawyer who has the task of protecting the value, and perhaps investing the 100k, leaving them with 200k on the 21st birthday. Hopefully this makes since. The lawyer doesn't own the 100k, but is tasked with protecting the value. Parents don't own the kid, but they are entrusted to develop the kid to adult hood.

What books/philosophers/ information would you recommend to new libertarians or when introducing libertarianism to others?
What politicians are genuine and should be supported?
What should we actually do to create change?
What is the libertarian view on violent revolution? Are we reaching a 'tipping point' for the occurrence of violence?

I have always liked the super-praxeologists, the ones who actually use and integrate it into their analysis--other than Mises, Rothbard, and HOppe, there are Guido Huelsmann, Joe Salerno, and Jeff Herbener. One of my favorite pieces is the one by Herbener on the calculation problem and arithmetic -- http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/RAE9_1_9.pdf

I try not to pretend to expertise I do not have, and I am not a historian. But I suppose I would point to the consequences of WWI and the way the US entry into it changed its character and ultimately led to WWII. I would point to Hoppe's revisionist historical views in his introduction to his Democracy book -- http://www.mises.org/hoppeintro.asp

Hello Stephan, I used you as a source in an IP speech I gave for a class last semester. My question is, do you believe plagiarism would be handled in an IP free society the same way as it is today? What differences do you think there would be? This was the only topic of concern my audience had after the speech.

I think plagiarism's standards would morph as internet research becomes more prevalent, but it would be the same: private censure of people who are basically dishonest or imprecise in their sourcing and attribution. This is not a rights issue, and plagiarism has almost nothing to do with patent and copyright, nor does fraud. People who support IP often try to conflate these issues--this is just dishonest equivocation. Just because you oppose dishonesty, or support contract enforcement, or oppose fraud, does not mean you support copyright.

I think plagiarism in a free society would still be shunned. If you crib a chapter from Great Expectations when you write a thesis in an English class, I expect you might get an F and get a reputation as a liar. This has almost nothing to do with copyrgiht.

What would be your advice for an entrepreneur with proprietary material who is seeking VC for staying principled? How does someone (or should they) communicate to potential investors that they don't want to go after people who use their ideas?

I saw Neil J. Schulman shout you down at Libertopia '12 :( and I thought it was rude of him. What is it Schulman really doesn't get or needs to understand about IP law? Do you think he's just blinded by his position as a content creator and the fears associated with making a living via that? (ie: it's difficult to make someone understand something when their income depends on them not understanding it--or at least if they think they do).

I like Neil and am friends with him, so don't want to make it personal. I guess we can assume someone is wrong and then psychologize about why. My guess is that in some cases like his, it's a combination of personal self-interest combined with unclear thinking about the foundations of property rights, say, with influence by people like Ayn RAnd who were very confused on the basis of property rights--she took the Lockean labor stuff and metaphors too seriously.

Does bitcoin qualify as IP? It's just as immaterial as a story and is solely comprised of bits and bytes of data. Therefore if it isn't theft to "share" a movie online, then shouldn't it be the same for "sharing" peoples bitcoins? (putting aside the technical aspects, I'm just asking about the ethics)

I don't think bitcoin qualifies as property--rather, as a rivalrous resource protectable by property rights. BUt my opinion is open to change on this topic. Bitcoin seems to be sui generis in some respects, and in need of careful analysis. Luckily some people are starting to do this, e.g. Peter Surda and Konrad Graf.

You mentioned "lack of clarity on property concepts" earlier as a reason people often have muddled views on IP. How would you attempt to explain the social construct of property "rights" to a layman outside the realm of the state?

Basically I am opposed to any law or rules that try to enforce this. I believe in the free market. I ralize some players have extra market power but that is because of the state; it should just get out of this area. You can't use the state to fix a problem caused by the state.

How do you justify Libertarian ethics and rights to people? I run into issues when people go all nihilistic or post modern on me while I'm trying to debate the validity of self-ownership, property rights and the NAP.

I find most people are decent and share basic values, like cooperation and peace and mutual prosperity. Unless they are sociopaths, in which case it's best to keep an eye on them instead of trying to persuade them. In the case of normal people, their main problem is they are not that economically literate and hold inconsistent views. They are influenced by state propaganda etc. So I try to simply keep referring to common values we share and by simple economic ilustrations show that their view B is not compatible with their view A.

Well it's rare to agree with a whole talk. You usually listen to a talk to hear another's perspective. I think some of these talks make sense, some I find interesting. It seems to me there are probably some racial differences between races, but the topic does not interest me overmuch. I am not a racist or racialist. I am an individualist and modernist and cosmopolitan humanist.

Do you think the relative unpopularity of economic liberty (laissez faire) as a policy is due to people's lack of knowledge or some predilection in favor of tangible, sold 'plans' over the unpredictability of freedom? Or neither or some mix of both?

I mean I see such broad support for raising minimum wage, for universal healthcare, for increasing financial regulation. Most people don't seem to have honestly considered the implications of those policies beyond the plan as its presented. And if you're against these sort of things, one accusation is that you have no plan to replace their proposal, ergo we can't leave these things to chance and must choose SOME plan, even if its a horrible, inefficient and wasteful one. It frustrates me that people think the absence of government action is chaos.

As a followup, how do you convince people to put their faith in free markets and free people without promising some specific plan or specific outcome? Saying "the free market will fix it" doesn't seem satisfying to most people.

hey Steph thanks for stopping by. The other day I seen that the Seattle Seahawks are not selling playoff tickets to people out of the area, and that they reserve the right to void any ticket they want at the door, presumably to scare off opposing fans from buying secondary market tickets and coming to the game. It got me wondering how would people that buy venue tickets protect their purchase? I think the fans need to respect the property rights of the team (let's pretend stadiums were privately owned) , but at the same time the fan purchased the ticket from someone else, so doesn't he own the product now? Or is all of this ultimately decided by contract between the sports team and the original purchaser?

What is your opinion on the issue of federalism and states' rights vs. centralization?

You say you support the issue of federalism over centralization (though ultimately you are an anarcho-capitalist who oppposes all states), but many self-described libertarians say that if you support the states over the federal government in a case like, say, Lawrence v. Texas or the Kelo decision, then you are not a libertarian because in those cases the states restrict individual rights and the federal government opposes those restrictions and thus valiantly defends individual rights (or so we think). This happened when I linked to an LRC blog post on a subreddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1vd4e0/planned_parenhood_got_5406_million_in_government/).

It got some interesting comments.

But one thing that struck me was this:

Which makes no sense to me: states do not have the power and authority to infringe on my rights. Ron Paul "libertarians" are fine with government interference in lives as long as it is a state government. Me, I want maximum actual freedom and liberty, not nominal freedom from the federal government.

I think this is false (as I think Ron Paul is a genuine libertarian and that his followers, for the most part, are genuine), but I would like your take on it, Stephan?

WEll I am always in favor of a result that supports someone's liberty, whether it is the state or the feds winning. http://archive.lewrockwell.com/kinsella/kinsella11.html. But if you ask me: what system seems more likely to support libertarian results--I would choose decentralism over centralization.

I can't speak for Paul but I am not "fine" with state invasions of rights. I just don't think the fedgov is or should be legally empowered to stop it.

Thanks. Same for me (though I am more in favor of federalism over central government power).

As for Ron Paul, I have tried to prove that while he favors states' rights over central government power and that he is indeed a genuine libertarian and not OK with state invasion of rights. But it seems that who I am trying to convince is not getting it, and he still has his anti-Paul, anti-federalism (not in that sense) bias.

I think people create for a number of reasons -- and the idea that you only do it for state monopoly rewards is ludicrous -- see http://c4sif.org/2011/07/mark-lemley-the-very-basis-of-our-patent-system-is-a-myth/ "Intellectual property law has long been justified on the belief that external incentives are necessary to get people to produce artistic works and technological innovations that are easily copied. This Essay argues that this foundational premise of the economic theory of intellectual property is wrong. Using recent advances in behavioral economics, psychology, and business-management studies, it is now possible to show that there are natural and intrinsic motivations that will cause technology and the arts to flourish even in the absence of externally supplied rewards, such as copyrights and patents."

I used to believe in the whole ethics side of libertarianism thing, that property rights and individual freedom were somehow the "right" thing, but I couldn't justify it, I know morals are subjective. As I came to learn more, I realised that property rights are the only way to ensure resources are managed in a way the benefits everybody. That is, to enrich yourself you must enrich other people, or at the very least harm no one. To progress you must help other people progress. If setting up a game, the rules of cooperation, property rights are the only way it can work.

You seem to rest much of your views on IP on the claim that something can't be legitimate property if it requires the state to enforce that claim, but much of the physical property ownership in the world also relies heavily on the very same state to enforce. It seems as though the natural rights justifications of property (physical or otherwise) are simply a moral framework laid on top of the economic principle that something must be both rivalrous and easily excludable to become "property." In reality many societies have developed with widely varying notions of property, and those that recognized property in the economically efficient sense tended to do better than those that didn't, and remain today.

This interpretation would also suggest that if intellectual works can be excluded in some way without the state, such as a surety bond an author takes out with a publishing company before handing over a manuscript, you could easily enforce some kind of limited and likely temporary intellectual property relationship somewhat similar to the current one enforced by the state.

My main argument against IP is simply that it is incompatible with, and violates, natural property rights in scarce resources. This argument holds whether you are a minarchist or an anarchist. Even the minarchist claims to support normal property rights; he should recognize that IP is simply incompatible therewith.

A secondary or backup argument is one that recognizes that the state (and legislation) are necessary for patent and copyright. For the libertarian anarchist opposed to the state, or the libertarian opposed to legislation (as I am, even on non-anarchist grounds -- see my http://mises.org/daily/4147) -- this is another problem with IP or at least patent and copyright. Normal property rights have been enforced by the state but need not be. They can arise in customary or decentralized law.